


thirty years

by mellarosa



Series: not too not familiar [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, TAZ Balance, takes place after the events of story and song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-27 04:30:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18296870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mellarosa/pseuds/mellarosa
Summary: lucretia gets a gift.





	thirty years

when lucretia finally dies - of old age, and that’s a gift she genuinely didn’t think she’d ever receive - she wakes up, and she’s on a hill, and in the near distance she can see a cottage.

she knows where she is. kravitz told them what the raven queen had allowed magnus and julia, and it’d brought no small measure of peace to lucretia’s heart (though the gods know there’s still plenty of tumult and chaos and pain digging their claws into her psyche). but. but lucretia didn’t think she’d be allowed this. lup and barry have free reign, given their positions, and of course magnus, and probably when the others reached the end of their far longer lifespans - but lucretia? 

she hesitates. the sun(?) is high, so she can’t tell if there are lights on, but when she strains her ears she hears dogs barking and - and yes, that’s magnus’ booming laugh, followed by one just as deep and warm, but with more bells. lucretia knows that laugh, but only from a distance. she’d been there, at magnus’ wedding. disguised and silent, but…

lucretia takes an involuntary, stumbling step forward, and nearly falls. she doesn’t know this body. and it is a body, of some sort. the sunlight is warm on her skin, the dirt solid beneath her boots, and the scent of lavender is faint but lovely. but this body…

lucretia looks at her hands, touches her face, her hair. 

she was nineteen years old when the starblaster took off, and never got past twenty. not really, not when everything was reset at the end of the year. she spent a century hovering between a teenage body and the beginnings of adulthood. after, after junior, after the tragedy she’d crafted from pride and desperation, she’d only had a few years to relearn the ways of aging before she lost twenty years in wonderland. twenty years, and lucretia didn’t care about lost beauty or youth, but - well. how strange it felt to look in the mirror. she hasnt been her age in so long. her body has either been too familiar or too strange. on her deathbed, she’d looked at her wrinkled hands and stared. they should have been smooth and soft and warm. they should have been bone, been dust.

lucretia looks at her hands and doesn’t know them, not really - some sort of strange mirror, both familar, but not too familiar - but not too not familiar. 

she realizes she’s thirty years old, give or take. for a moment she feels intense vertigo - will she ever be the correct age? - but then it hits her. lucretia has never been thirty years old. ten, nineteen, forty eight, one hundred sixteen, but never thirty. 

this is a new start. her, but a her that should have been. 

in front of her, she hears her brother laugh, hears her sister-in-law reply. behind her, she knows, will come the rest of her family, in their time. she steps forward into a new beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> i just,.,.,... get really emotional about her okay. originally posted on [my tumblr](https://dishesoap.tumblr.com/post/183812159803/when-lucretia-finally-dies-of-old-age-and)


End file.
